Business tools such as voice-mail, email, spreadsheets, image-based rich documents, and even video have superseded historic business communication methods such as posted mail and telephone conferences as the preferred tools for transacting business. Even these modern tools, however, have their problems in that they are static, single-media, “unimodal,” and cannot quickly convey complex information in a way that today's business environment demands. Online meeting resources impose time constraints that are difficult to coordinate across schedules and time zones, and online collaboration systems are disjointed from natural workflow. Shrinking development cycle times, non-uniform work schedules, and time-zone-dispersed teams can no longer be held up waiting for meeting schedules to coalesce. Emerging communication mechanisms such as instant messaging, social networking, blogging, micro-blogging, and forum discussions can be esoteric, lack clear business application, and may be dismissed as time-wasting distractions rather than effective business tools.
Relaying important information to colleagues and clients who are not immediately accessible is increasingly difficult as the world changes and communication remains constrained by the aging technologies described above. Relational information, graphical processes, and streaming video feeds have become commonplace and cannot be adequately described without extreme effort and time investment.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other limitations in the prior art.